11/02/2006

Gross ExaggerationsDesperate, deceptive political ads make a dirty business even dirtierBy MICK FARREN

I try to picture the meeting that cooked up the subliminally racist TV commercial linking black Democrat Senate contender Harold Ford Jr. with the now infamous winking blond floozy: What are these people like? My imagination conjures up images of not-quite Ann Coulters and smooth ex-frat boys, sniggering with glee when some researcher unearthed the story that, back in February 2005, Ford had attended a Super Bowl party hosted by Playboy. Hardly a scandal, but enough for these boys and girls of the Republican National Committee to work busily on the ad that could only appeal to the very worst in the Tennesseean psyche. When RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman was forced to pull the commercial – but only after it had been aired for free on every news channel and even YouTube – he immediately replaced it with another that claimed Ford “wants to give the abortion pill to schoolchildren.”

Up in Wisconsin, the campaign team of Republican congressional challenger Paul R. Nelson had even less reality to work with when it translated Dem incumbent Ron Kind’s vote to fund a sex study by the National Institutes of Health to a TV slogan: “Ron Kind Pays for Sex.” “XXX” was stamped across Kind’s face, and the visuals included stock newsreel footage of me-so-horny Asian hookers. Meanwhile, in New York, a staffer for Democratic House candidate Michael A. Arcuri misdialed the toll-free number for the State Division of Criminal Justice, and was connected to a phone-sex line instead. The National Republican Campaign Committee managed to build that into a TV commercial accusing Arcuri of using taxpayers’ dollars for phone sex while a soft-focus stripper undulated in the background. A later reality check revealed the misdial had cost taxpayers a whopping $1.25, but the ad had already aired, and whatever potential damage had been done.